We started this website with the intention of offering straightforward advice around family travel and cutting back on unnecessary planning, and the stress that comes with it. Today we are are writing about dining reservations at Disneyland Resort and whether they are necessary for a fun, easy and enjoyable trip.
Elsewhere on this site, we have written about Disneyland Resort dining reservations, and you have probably seen invitations to make them on the Disneyland website or app. If you are an experienced Walt Disney World visitor, they might seem positively essential. So… do you need to make dining reservations for your Disneyland Resort visit?
Let’s take care of the answer right here, and then we will take some space to elaborate on it further. No, you do not need to have dining reservations in order to eat in Disneyland Park, Disney California Adventure Park or Downtown Disney District. In fact, we rarely make reservations to dine at Disneyland Resort (and we never go hungry). So let us look at what we do instead and why it is easy and even practical to visit Disneyland Resort without dining reservations.
Quick Service Restaurants Outnumber Table Service Restaurants
First, it is helpful to know that many Disneyland Resort restaurants do not even take advance reservations. Disneyland Park and Disney California Adventure Park both have many more quick service restaurants or snack carts than they do table service restaurants. So, why is that important? First…
A quick (service) refresher:
Quick service restaurants—also sometimes known as counter service restaurants—are places where you place your food and beverage order and pay for it at a counter register. When your food is ready, you will pick it up from the counter yourself and bring it to a table (or other dining location) you find for yourself. This would be analogous to fast food restaurants or your local sandwich shop. Note that Disneyland Resort does also offer the option of mobile ordering your food from quick service restaurants. You can find our guide for it here: Disneyland Mobile Ordering Guide.
At table service restaurants at Disneyland Resort, you will usually be seated at a table and given a menu. You will place your order with a member of the waitstaff, and the food will be brought to your table and cleared from your table by staff members. You will be given a bill at the end of your meal, and you will pay at that time.
Snack carts are what the name suggests: little carts or kiosks along walkways in Disneyland Resort that serve just a few handheld food and beverage items. Think churros, popcorn and various drinks.
Disneyland Resort Table Service Restaurants Accept Reservations… The Rest Do Not
In general, table service restaurants at Disneyland Resort accept reservations while quick service restaurants and snack carts do not. If you approach a table service restaurant without a reservation, they may have a table open for you, or they may add your name to a waitlist. At a quick service restaurant, you will simply get in line, or better yet, place a mobile order and pick-up your food when it is ready.
There are just a few exceptions to this. First, sometimes quick service restaurants will participate in dining packages. In these situations, you usually can make reservations, despite the host restaurant not typically offering dining reservations. Second, there are some buffet-style meals offered at Disneyland Resort at which you will select your food and bring it to your table yourself. These restaurants still have some waitstaff, and you will be billed at the end of your meal. Disneyland’s buffet style restaurants do offer reservations.
In any case, most of your food options at Disneyland Resort come from places that do not even accept reservations. So, you certainly have plenty of options for dining at Disneyland Resort without advanced reservations or planning.
And Those Disneyland Quick Service Restaurants Are Great!
Our favorite foods at Disneyland Resort comes from quick service restaurants and snack carts. If good nutrition was not a factor, we would probably eat nothing but churros and Dole Whips at Disneyland. But even when we are looking for substantial meals, we favor places like Aunt Cass Cafe and Ronto Roasters.
We have had some nice meals at table service restaurants, but they were nice and memorable more because of the atmosphere than the food itself. The ambience of the Blue Bayou Restaurant is unmatched, but the food there actually does have some near-matches elsewhere in Disneyland. For example, one of the Blue Bayou’s signature items is the Monte Cristo, but you can also grab a Monte Cristo at the quick service Royal Street Veranda. Are the sandwiches exactly the same? No, but the Royal Street Veranda one will do if you are craving a Monte Cristo. Plus, we do not mind paying less for a “snack size” Monte Cristo when we cannot finish the full-size one anyway!
There are so many great dining options available from counters and carts at Disneyland, that you really will not be missing-out if you skip the table service places all together!
Dining Reservations Can Be Tricky to Make and Keep
So, we like to skip dining reservations at Disneyland Resort, because we actually like the quick service food, but we also like not being tied to a dining schedule or having the hassle of making reservations.
Dining reservations for Disneyland Resort restaurants open sixty days in advance. You can make them through the Disneyland app, website or by phone. Some of the most popular dining reservations (Trader Sam’s Tiki Bar) disappear within seconds while others are still available throughout those sixty days. Depending on which reservations you want, you may need to be ready at your computer when they open.
The ease of online scheduling makes some of those less popular restaurants fairly easy to reserve. However, Disney has a no-show policy that we think adds some hassle to your vacation. Disney asks for your credit card information when you make any dining reservations. If you forget that you made a reservation and do not show-up for it, you will be charged a no-show fee for each person in your party.
While we think it is courteous to cancel unwanted reservations, we do think the threat of that no-show fee adds some stress to our Disneyland Resort time.
Plus, if we are going to be focused on making a reservation at Disneyland Park or Disney California Adventure Park, we prefer it would be for a Lightning Lane! In fact, if we are working hard to optimize our Lightning Lane rides, we like to leave ourselves free to focus on that and not dining reservations.
Mobile Ordering Makes Dining Easy at Disneyland Resort
If you still think dining reservations sound good because they would mean less waiting in line at Disneyland, we absolutely understand that perspective! Unfortunately, there can still be some waiting even with dining reservations. We have shown up at Blue Bayou for a reservation made months in advance and been instructed to stand in a substantial line just to check-in, and there was more waiting after that check-in too!
To minimize waiting, we really recommend taking advantage of the free mobile ordering service on the Disneyland app. We have our guide to it right here: Disneyland Mobile Ordering Guide. It’s really a pretty straightforward service, and once you get the hang of it, it should save you loads of time.
We like it because we can select menu items while we are waiting in a queue for an attraction. This is an efficient use of our time, and we can discuss menu items without the pressure of holding up a restaurant line. We select our pick-up time, place our order and grab it from the restaurant counter when it is ready.
The system works amazingly well. Recently, I walked past such a long line of people waiting to place their orders at an Adventureland restaurant that I was really quite worried I was doing something wrong. But, the cast members assured me I had come to the right (empty) pick-up counter for my mobile ordering pick-up. Everyone else was just waiting to order in person. This service can really save you quite a lot of time!
Disneyland Dining Walk-ups and Waitlists
You should also know that just because you did not make a reservation does not mean you cannot eat at a table service restaurant.
So, what if you want to eat at a table service restaurant, but you have not made an advance reservation? First, you can see if there are any same-day reservations available by checking the Disneyland app. Other guests can and do cancel reservations, and you may be able to grab one at the last minute.
If there are no reservations available, you can add yourself to a walk-up list. In many cases, you do not even need to actually walk-up to the restaurant to do this. You can open the Disneyland app and see the estimated wait time for seating at your desired restaurant. If the time seems reasonable, you can add your name to that restaurant’s waitlist. You often need to be in the general area of the restaurant in order to do this. If you prefer, you can also speak to a cast member at the restaurant directly.
Keep in mind that sometimes these walk-up lists do close due to high demand, so this option is not always available. Again, you will be happy to know that there are plenty of other dining options all around you.
A Pitch for Bringing Your Own Food to Disneyland Resort
Finally, we frequently skip making dining reservations at Disneyland Resort, because we always bring our own food to the parks. This is absolutely allowed, and it is one of our favorite ways to save money at Disneyland Resort. We have a whole article about it here: Why You Should Bring Your Own Food to Disneyland.
Times When You Might Want to Make a Reservation
Now that we have shared all of our reasons for usually skipping Disneyland Resort dining reservations, we will admit that there are times when they are useful. We make dining reservations in the following scenarios:
- If there is a popular restaurant we really want to experience, we will make reservation to make sure we can get in.
- When we are planning to do a dining package (dinner and a show), we will make a reservation. If we want that reserved seating for an entertianment offering, we really want that to be scheduled in advance.
- On “rest days” at Disneyland Resort we are less worried about a dining reservation interfering with our flow through the parks, and making a reservation for something like a character meal or Trader Sam’s Tiki Bar can add something special to a more relaxed day.
- Finally, if we know we need to build some time for refueling and recharging into our parks days, we might make a dining reservation just to MAKE ourselves take a break.
If you do decide to make a reservation, visit the Disneyland app or website up to sixty days in advance and click away. Or just relax and skip the Disneyland dining reservations altogether.
Thank you for reading this post on whether dining reservations are important for a visit to Disneyland Resort.
We hope you found this article helpful. For more on dining at Disneyland Resort, see How to Save Money & Eat Well with Disneyland Dining Tips. That article is part of our larger Step-by-Step Disneyland Prep, our free and complete guide to planning a Disneyland Resort trip. Please also consider subscribing to our newsletter below. Thanks again for reading!
